What We Learned From “The Dawn of the Justice League”

You would be hard pressed to find a comic book fan who watched last night’s CW “The Dawn of the Justice League” special and didn’t walk away being thoroughly excited based on what co-hosts Kevin Smith and Geoff Johns revealed. The first footage of Wonder Woman was thrilling to see and the new Suicide Squad trailer ended the show with a huge bang that people are still talking about this on social media this morning. For the Green Lantern fan there was confirmation that the Green Lantern Corps movie is still a part of the DC Cinematic Universe plans, but if the imagery that was shown last night was chosen intentionally they said a lot more than the few words spoken by Geoff Johns.

When the initial concept art was released yesterday the Justice League was represented in the form of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Flash and Aquaman – the six members who’ve been publicly announced as having been cast and who all appear in one form or another in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. From the beginning of last night’s show Green Lantern had a presence in the imagery that was broadcast about the Justice League, something I personally don’t believe DC Films would have done if the character doesn’t figure into their plans for the Justice League films. Without coming right out and saying it the allusion is that we can expect to see a Green Lantern on the team. I also believe that including Green Lantern right from the start was an intentional effort to show publicly that there is confidence in the franchise despite the performance of the 2011 film.

The other thing to note is that throughout the initial part of the show as the Justice League is talked about only Hal Jordan appears on screen as Green Lantern through animated comic book art. As carefully planned out as these kinds of reveals are this reinforces to me that Hal will be the Green Lantern at least initially in the Justice League films. If DC Films is undecided about which character they plan to use at this point in the game then they’d likely have used images of several different Green Lanterns to keep conjecture alive, however they chose to specifically show one particular character several times making an unspoken statement about what viewers can expect.

Dan Amboyer

This plays into the recent online rumors that support the notion that actor Dan Amboyer has been cast as Hal Jordan and that his role in the film is being closely guarded. The Amboyer rumor started nearly a year ago and was quickly dismissed by many people in the online scoop game. However the most recognizable name in the scoop game, Umberto Gonzalez, has recently changed his responses when asked about the rumor and now neither denies nor confirms the information. He’s recently stated that he’s working on finding out the casting information for Green Lantern and has mentioned at least one other actor in connection with the role.

As for Amboyer himself, he’s of course not saying much about his participation in Batman v Superman and when approached on social media about Green Lantern he politely thanks people for their comments. In the November interview below he dodges the issue when asked outright which is interesting in itself. Jump to the 26:26 mark to see his comments.

Getting back to last night’s show, Smith and Johns do come back to Green Lantern in the closing moments of the special. Johns reveals that “the Green Lanterns and the Green Lantern Corps are coming to join the Justice League universe” before showing a quick montage of animated comic book art. The imagery starts with showing all five of the Earth Lanterns and then shifts to an image of Hal Jordan before returning to Johns and Smith. A cut back to more imagery shows more emphasis on Hal and John Stewart before ending with an image of the two side by side. Knowing again that this is an intentional campaign by DC Films to promote these films the unspoken take away is that Hal and John will co-star as the anchor characters in the 2020 Green Lantern Corps movie. As a fan I’ve already said that I think that Hal Jordan needs a soft reboot in Justice League and that John Stewart needs a proper introduction in Green Lantern Corps and last night I walked away thinking that’s exactly what DC Films is going to do.

An image from “The Dawn of the Justice League” special

While the choice of images could be dismissed, I don’t believe that DC Films is going to be that casual in how they promote these films and in how they represent their intentions to a fan base which is paying very close attention to their every action. DC Films may not have told us a great deal about Green Lantern’s role in the movie universe I do think they showed us what we can look forward to if we examine the choices they made in last night’s special.

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The Podcast of Oa Episode 97 | The Blog of OaAugust 1, 2017 at 8:34 pm

[…] soon be coming to Google Play Music and Spotify. Myron shares his observations from the recent The Dawn of the Justice League television special and how he believes that while they didn’t say too much about Green […]

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